The city is developing guidelines to preserve historic houses (pre-1940), both from being torn down and from having their exteriors substantially changed during remodeling. Neighbors of these houses have complained that replacing those houses with oversized, "cookie-cutter" houses has damaged the character of their neighborhoods. Many individuals and groups have started to push for design guidelines for the whole city (different guidelines to reflect the character of different neighborhoods). There are city design guidelines for residential development now, but they are voluntary and not very detailed. It is anticipated that protection for the city's "historic" neighborhoods, such as Professorville and College Terrace, will push these controversial construction practices increasingly into other the neighborhoods, such as Barron Park.
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The balance between individual property rights and community rights is often difficult. When you bought your houses, you were probably considering many factors in addition to the lot and the house: the city, the schools, the look and feel of the neighborhood. For example, the generally rural appearance of Barron Park comes in part from the greater front and side yard setbacks compared to other neighborhoods.
You want to be free to make reasonable changes and improvements to your property, but you also want some protection from your neighbor making changes that might damage your property values or the livability of your home. Current zoning laws provide a basic level of protection. Design guidelines would provide an additional level of protection (what and how much is to be determined).
Building permits check that construction meets zoning restrictions and approved construction methods, and are highly quantitative. Design guidelines would be similar checks, but would involve judgement of other professionals (e.g., the City's Architecture Review Board), and taking into account any comments by neighbors.
Guidelines often handle common cases well, but work poorly for some uncommon cases. Barron Park has many uncommon cases. If you are aware of special cases that need to be addressed, please describe it (and suggested solution) and attach it to this questionnaire. We will forward it to the city.